Biographical Note

Claude L Pickens, Jr. (1900-1985) and his wife, Elizabeth Zwemer Pickens,
were Christian missionaries of the China Inland Mission (C.I.M.) and had
a particular interest in the category of China's Muslims who are now officially
designated as "Hui" in China. Their interests were both evangelical
and scholarly. From 1927 to 1937, Pickens worked in river ports along the
Yangzi and for the Episcopal Diocese in Hankow, where he was assistant
pastor to the Chinese pastor at St. Peter's Church. Â In 1933, accompanied
by his father-in-law, Samuel M. Zwemer, a missionary to Muslims in the
Middle East, and again in 1936, Pickens and other China missionaries made
surveys of Muslims in northwest China, northeast Tibet, and Inner Mongolia.
Â In 1933, Rev. Samuel Zwemer was invited by the Kuling Convention Committee
in Kiangsi, China, to address the Convention. Zwemer, who was editor of
the influential journal Moslem
World, had previously visited China in 1917 and made a trek into China's
northwest in 1936, during which time he supplemented his earlier photographic
record.

From 1937 to 1938, during the Sino-Japanese war, Pickens was on leave in
the U.S. and in Zamboanga, Philippines, where he worked with Muslims. In
1939 the family returned to central China. During WWII they were held from
1941 to 1942 by the Japanese as prisoners of war; then from 1942 to 1945
Rev. Pickens worked for the FDMS in New York City and attended Columbia University.
In 1945 he received an M.A. from the Dept. of Chinese and Japanese with
a Â thesis entitled Annotated Bibliography of Literature on Islam in China (Hankow:
Society of the Friends of Moslem in China). Â His own copy of the Bibliography contains
numerous citations added by him in hand over the years and is held in the
Harvard-Yenching Library's collection of his materials. Rev. Pickens described
the genesis of his collection in a letter to the Library in 1984:

I began collecting such literature in 1926 when I met Mr. I. [Isaac]
Mason in Shanghai. He left to retire in England the
next year and gave me a number of the old books. I was able to accumulate
a number of the later publications through the Muslim Book Store in Peking.
When we had to leave China after Pearl Harbour [sic]
I brought some of these Islam books home, took them back to China in
1945 and brought them out again in 1950. If nothing else, they
have traveled a good deal.

After WWII the Pickens family returned to central China where Claude was
Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral, Hankow, until 1950 when the family returned
to New York. From 1953 to 1965, he worked with the National Council of
Churches' Student Volunteer Movement of the National Council of Churches,
and then with foreign students in New York City for the Foreign and Domestic
Missionary Society-Episcopal Church Center. In 1962, he took a leave to minister
to Aramco employees in Arabia. He Â retired to Annisquam, MA, in 1969 to study
and write.

Islam in China: A Selected Bibliography of English-Language Publications

Jaschok, Maria, and Shui Jingjun, The history of womenâ€™s mosques in Chinese
Islam: a mosque of their own (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000)

The Legacy of Islam in China : an international symposium in memory of
Joseph F. Fletcher, Harvard University, 14-16 April 1989 / sponsored
by the John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies & the Andrew
D. [sic] Mellon Foundation.Â
(Cambridge: The Center, 1989]Â Â

Leslie, Donald, The integration of religious minorities in China:
the case of Chinese Muslims (Canberra: Australian National University,
1998) Â

Leslie, Donald, Islamic literature in Chinese, late Ming and early Châ€™ing:
books, authors, and associates (Belconnen: Canberra College of Advanced
Education, 1981)

Lipman, Jonathan, Familiar strangers: a history of Muslims in Northwest
China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997)